Opinion: Hollywood and DRM

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There’s no shortage of advocacy groups and activists who hate digital rights management (a.k.a. DRM) systems, the electronic locks used to limit copying on downloadable songs and movies, computer software and other digital fare. The Los Angeles Times editorial board, however, is not in that camp. In an editorial today about Steve Jobs urging the major record labels to stop using DRM on 99-cent downloads, the board tried to make its stance on the issue clear. DRM can be a boon when it’s used to enable new experiences and business models, but it may be self-defeating when used to roll back what consumers are accustomed to doing with the material they buy. The latter approach breeds public opposition to DRM in general, motivates hackers and undermines uses that may be beneficial to consumers, such as the DRM that enables Napster to offer unlimited plays from an online jukebox for $10 a month.

Some readers, though, were confused by the reference to Hollywood studios at the end of the piece. Jobs didn’t call on the studios to remove DRM from movie downloads or DVD, an omission that led some music-industry executives to accuse him of being hypocritical. But the home video market isn’t analogous to the market for music in this very important sense: Hollywood has always used technical controls to try to prevent consumers from copying the movies they buy. So when Hollywood uses DRM on downloadable movies to limit copying, that’s not changing the longstanding value proposition -- with one notable exception. By preventing movies from being copied onto conventional DVDs, the current version of the DRM blocks many consumers from watching the movies they download on their living-room TV sets. That situation should change later this year, however, thanks to new DVD-burning technology that scrambles discs in a way that conventional DVD players can decode.